Bad Roadblocks Make For Lousy Neighbors

MICHAEL MAYO COMMENTARY

September 25, 2005|MICHAEL MAYO COMMENTARY

The out-of-control control freaks of Southwest Ranches need to get rid of those welcome signs warning drivers to slow down for horses. Instead, they should put up pictures of a rat in a maze with a little arrow that says, "You are here. Now get lost."

A visit the other day reminded me why I rarely venture west of Interstate 75. It gets goofy out here.

Take, for instance, Southwest Ranches' crusade against all manner of perceived nuisances, whether they be churchgoers, neighboring town drivers or soon, if all goes according to plan, its own residents.

A certain old-guard segment resents that west Broward isn't Kansas anymore. So in the name of "preserving rural lifestyle" their solution has been to block access and close roads, forcing people to drive longer distances, burn more fuel and clog the fewer available routes.

So much for the common good, or common sense.

"We use roads in other towns, so why are we all of a sudden saying nobody can use ours?" said Maggie Torres, a Southwest Ranches resident for 15 years. "And soon we won't even be able to go through our own town. It's crazy."

Torres lives on Southwest 188th Avenue, just south of Southwest 63rd Street. To prevent cut-through traffic from Pembroke Pines and Weston, the town plans to barricade her block, among others, next month.

It means she would be isolated from the rest of Southwest Ranches.

It means her two teenaged children would have a roundabout 10-mile drive to Cypress Bay High School in Weston, not a direct 11/2-mile trip. Instead of going up 188th to Griffin Road, they would have to go south on 188th to Sheridan Street, west to U.S. 27, then north to Griffin before heading east.

It means if her elderly neighbor had an emergency, the daughter who lives on the north side of town or the ambulance that would take her to the Cleveland Clinic would take that much longer to get to her.

"It's like they're telling certain people we don't even belong in our own town," Torres said. "It's wrong."

To see how this absurdity is already playing out, all you have to do is take a spin down Southwest 199th, 202nd and 205th avenues.

These are perfectly good streets built with perfectly good county money.

But sometimes, in order to go five feet, you need to drive five miles out of your way.

The streets used to run uninterrupted from Griffin Road to Stirling Road, pleasant stretches of suburbia with large lots and comfy homes, pools and horses in the back yard, basketball hoops and kids riding bicycles up front. You could hardly tell where Southwest Ranches ended and Pembroke Pines began.

But now there's no doubt.

It isn't exactly the Berlin Wall or the 39th parallel, but the barricades running across each street have a distinct Cold War feel.

Now there is tension among neighbors and households. One Ranches teen said her parents like the barricades but she hates them, because she works in Pembroke Pines.

"This was a shocker to us," said Luz Mori, who has lived on the Pembroke Pines side of Southwest 202nd Avenue for six years and whose children attend school in Weston. "First they put in speed bumps, then they put up the barricades and now nobody can get around."

Gary Feder, who lives in Pembroke Pines near the 205th Avenue barricade and works in Weston, can't understand why his remote street was blocked in early June. He worries about school kids being forced to walk further to bus stops on streets with no sidewalks.

"We're caught in the political crosshairs of a larger battle," said Feder. "I just hope common sense and neighborliness prevail."

Page Giacin of Southwest Ranches lives in the Griffin 345 development that will be affected by the next round of closures. If a new entry gate isn't built, the development will be landlocked.

"The only way in will be by helicopter," Giacin said. "The joke here is our kids will have to learn parachute jumping."

Part of this is reaction to the development and traffic that has mushroomed in west Broward. And part stems from a feud that began when some Southwest Ranches residents were upset Pembroke Pines wouldn't build a bridge from Sheridan Street to the Abundant Life Ministries. Hundreds of worshipers used Ranches roads to get to the church.

Aghast at the prospect of churchgoers on their roads, residents organized Sunday morning "block parties" to force them on to less direct Pines roads. Where I live, we focus on things like drug dealers and prostitutes on Federal Highway.

Then Southwest Ranches started putting the squeeze on other Pines residents with the permanent closures. Soon the town will be squeezing its own.

It's foolish and dangerous, lots of inconvenience for no good reason.

"The way it's been solved doesn't work for a lot of us," said Giacin. "The level of arrogance that's come from our town council has been disappointing."

Before going further, the forces behind this should re-read Mending Wall, the famous Robert Frost poem that questions the notion of "Good fences make good neighbors." Wrote Frost:

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out

And to whom I was like to give offence.

These roadblocks offend plenty.

Michael Mayo can be reached at mmayo@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4508.